'Erin Burnett OutFront': What the Critics Are Saying

This week, former CNBC co-host Erin Burnett debuted her new primetime CNN program, Erin Burnett OutFront, and the critics made their opinions known as the week progressed.

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Her premiere on Monday caused an uproar among members of Hollywood and critics alike, when Burnett paid a visit to Occupy Wall Street and mocked those who were taking part. In fact, Media Matters says Burnett should apologize for the "cheap-shot report." That caused filmmaker Michael Moore to express dismay, which in turn, was used as fodder on Tuesday night's program.

The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik wrote in a post that went up Wednesday evening, "By now, there is already a consensus bilding about Burnett based on her trip to Occupy Wall Street, and none of it is good for her or CNN's .. latest 'adventure' in weeknight programming."

"At a time when many people come to cable news looking for someone they can trust to help lead them out of the economic nightmare this country has plunged them into," he writes, "she comes across as self-satisfied, smug, priviledged [sic] and feeling not one whit of their pain."

Zurawik pointed out that though Burnett's "Seriously" segment is similar to Cooper's "The RidicuList," Cooper "earned a kind of moral (or, at least, cultural) authority through his work as a journalist on CNN" to do such a thing.

Forbes' Eric Jackson called Burnett "too dismissive and condescending of these [Occupy Wall Street] protesters." He said later, "Erin should quit grinning and winking at what a bunch of rubes these Occupy Wall Street proesters are. She would do well to remember that quite a few of these country bumpkins ... are actually watching her network. Seriously."

Salon's Glenn Greenwald traced Burnett's job at Goldman Sachs to her CNBC career to her joining CNN, pointing out her ties to Wall Street.

"It's the opposite of surprising that large corporations which own media outlets want to hire people to play the role of journalist on the TV who are slavishly devoted to their culture and their agenda," he writes. "But that's the point: the pretense that these people are "objective journalists" delivering opinion-free facts is so discredited that they should just stop pretending.  It's embarrassing already.

CNN issued a statement to the Atlantic Wire following the criticisms, saying, "We support Erin and the OutFront team and we respect that there will be a range of opinions on any given story."